New Professor Hits All the Right Notes
A day of events later this month will formally welcome Westmont’s new Adams professor of music and worship. However, Michael Shasberger has already been winning the ears and hearts of the local community.
Shasberger arrived at Westmont in August for the fall semester. In his first season he has introduced two new annual events: a fall choral festival featuring high school ensembles as well as Westmont choirs, and a Christmas festival, “The Word Became Flesh.” All the creative and performing arts programs lent their talents to the Christmas performance, which sold out weeks in advance.
Shasberger will be installed as the recipient of the Adams chair during convocation, Friday, Jan. 27 at 10:30 a.m. in Murchison Gym. Shasberger will then lead a dedicatory presentation in Porter Hall at 4 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
Trustee Denise Adams and her husband, Stephen, established the Adams chair to enhance the music program at Westmont and increase its impact on the Santa Barbara community.
“We are so pleased to have Michael at Westmont,” says Provost Shirley Mullen. “He brings a larger vision for the role of music in worship and the life of the college. His work will enable us to strengthen our connections with local churches and the Santa Barbara arts community.”
Music has been an important part of Shasberger’s life since childhood. His father directed the church choir, and he took up the trumpet at an early age. He majored in trumpet and voice at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and earned his doctorate at USC.
He has worked at a number of churches, high schools and colleges. Shasberger spent ten years at Butler University in Indiana, conducting choral groups and teaching in the school of fine arts. He left the tenured position to accept a position with the Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver, where he worked for another nine years. Shasberger then returned to teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Colorado Christian University, before accepting the position at Westmont.
He says all his interests have come together at Westmont: working with students, presenting church music, building new traditions.
Shasberger and his family have already gotten involved in local arts organizations. His daughters (12 and 15 years old) play the cello and the violin in the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony; one of them also sings with the Santa Barbara Children’s Chorus. His wife, Elizabeth, is an accountant and a vocalist.